Hey, folks. New week, new page, and I am BEAT. Gotta get to bed before I fall asleep at my desk.
I will pause to say two things, though, before I make my bed, and then go to it. First, yay! Actual Singaporean landmark! I’ve never been, but this is, I think, a reasonable rendering of the Supreme Law Courts. And second, Yay! Actual view of Howlers doing things in combat, and performing their main function – rapid-air-deployment armored hybrid-VTOL hovertank. This is meant to look like an earlier model, so it’s got different details from the ones you’ve seen before. Still, I think it’s pretty neat and it was fun to draw it doing something active and “Howler-like.”
Okay. Sleepytime. Have a good one, folks!
Great view of the Howlers in ground-effect hover dealing out some nastiness. This is shaping up to be a great chapter, and I cannot wait to see what happens between Mike and Hauley.
Yeah, actual battle scenes in a military comic. Who would have thought? 😀
pretty neat looking page once more
one detail, though: the outlining of the chinook’s (at least, it looks like one) rotor blades look a bit too large, especially the front one.
I do realise it’s mostly a perspective thing, but try to watch out with stuff like this: it can quite easily look wrong in some way
(for humans the term is uncanny valley, but it kinda applies to everything: you havea gut feeling something is off, or wrong, but can’t really say what precisely it is without careful examination)
And although 6-Commando is a comic, you generally try to have the proportions mostly realistic, from what I’ve seen.
Point taken – I’ve seen that episode of 30 Rock. 😉 A lot of it has to do with the weird angle.
The Howlers still give me problems with ‘willing suspension of disbelief’. Pilot has Plexiglas canopy to give him a good field of vision; side nacelles obscure almost everything, especially at ground level.
Probably valid arguments, but , well… What can I say? Why do X-Wings bother with control surfaces in space? Why does he U.S.S. Enterprise make a sound when it goes to warp speed? I do my best to make the things in the comic have a degree of verisimilitude, but in the end it’s a comic book, not an engineering exercise – that’s what I do during the work week. Hopefully it’s not something that will so damage your ability to read the comic that you’ll stop doing so! 😉
It’s called the “Rule of Cool”(SEE: “TV Tropes and Idioms”). 😀
Mike, I know this whole thing about understanding humans is new to you and all but, generally speaking, humans tend to freak out when crazy deus ex machina tanks start screwing around inside their brains.
Well put, Cameron. Unfortunately, “we are committed”, so there’s nothing left to do but hang on for dear life, and hope this ride doesn’t crash and burn. 🙁
“The ride never ends!”
It does eventually, but not for a while yet. 😉
Welp… *Cracks open a fresh bottle of Lindisfarn Mead* I think I’m gonna need a few more of these before we’re through
I assume that ATGM defenses were already a thing in the time of the flashbacks, since that howler is expending three of them at once.
These are actually just rockets. Airburst weapons for antipersonnel duties, fired in clusters.
I dig this but those slab sided prowlers are in trouble if some one hits them, double this down for not moving at speed as well. Though yes airmobile assault so I guess the have no choice at this time until the heavies are landed.
No design is perfect. And the Howler is not by any means an MBT. Note that the later Howler design’s engine nacelles slope downward, and have additional armor layered over the engine. 😉
Yay design evolution.
Once again, I am both quite confused and fascinated.
😀
Not confused for too much longer,Mi hope, but fascinated is good!
Well, not confused like I can’t tell what’s going on entirely, more I suppose wondering what is going to happen instead.
So… Mike groks every live system he encounters in this way-
Human brain or electronic system regardless?
Wow. What’s the transfer mechanism? Brains are pretty low-voltage systems. Can we assume Haulley is in close physical proximity to Mike?
Does the tank include some gadget for precisely reading and manipulating minute electrical current fluctuations at a distance?
Was that in the design specs, or is it Emergent?
We’re almost nearly close to detailed reading of reading brain-waves in this universe, but it takes a ‘trode cap, a roomful of Expensive Hardware,
and a whole lot of sitting very still.
Even then we just get funny abstract art.
This AI seems to be able to do it on the fly. Am I correct in that assumption or is Haulley being held very still somewhere with his motor functions disconnected?
Have you thoughtmore about the properties of the man/machine interface?
I’m very curious
I have thought about it. I’m resisting the urge to do a Ghost In The Shell/Dresden Codax-style text wall explaining the nature of biological computing in Mike-One-Echo, but it is unravelling, here, so stay tuned.
Ok, the way I see this is like a flashback, and it is a traumatizing one for sure…hmm if Mike doesn’t know what is happening…then this means for some reason the commander’s monkey brain was remembering this and tying it to Mike. This is a subconscious feeling / memory that is associated with his fears about Mike in the real world
😀
“You might very well think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.”
Heh heh heh…
jesus f’in christ, i love your drawing style! been following this from the beginning on, and despite being notorically lazy, you finally managed to get me so overexcited that i actually managed to finally put a comment down!
keep up the great work, this comic as a whole is a stunning piece of art and massive awesome!
Hey, thanks, man! I’m glad you like it, and I hope you’ll keep reading! It does me a lot of good to know that people get so much enjoyment out of the comic, and it makes it easier to put in the effort every week. So thanks!
And wow, again just a masterpiece of Art, buddy. ^^
What I wondered about those howlers all the time, if they would be to fly IRL as shown in your comic here. Would be cool to see a simulation of these cool machines.
They fly, within limits. Above a low altitude (say, 1000 feet or so, or +/- 300 meters) they’re unstable, because they’re meant to operate on a modified ground effect, like an Ekranoplane. The kind of flying they do is more like a series of high-powered jumps.
Ah, so they are more of a Hovertank, rather then a jet-fighter. ^^ I see better now. It only confused me a bit, seeing that pic of Sarah in the Howler a bit ago, it gave me more the impression of a jetfighter. ^^